Fishing Expert Knows Those Mean Streets, Too

January 27, 1988|By John Husar.

Tom Neustrom felt the shivers of terror once again with Monday`s report of a Dallas cop murdered in cold blood.

The officer had stopped to write a traffic ticket on Sunday when a street marauder allegedly grabbed his gun and shot him in the head. Voices in the crowd had urged the man to ``shoot him, shoot him,`` and so he did, while the officer pleaded for his life.

Almost 17 years have passed since Neustrom-now a fishing guide-was in the same situation as a Chicago cop.

Neustrom and his partner were coming in early to get measured for tuxedoes for the partner`s wedding when they saw two punks hassling a news vendor near 44th Street and King Drive. The men saw the police car and got into their own car and drove off.

But there was something strange about that car, and so the police pulled it over. They were checking it when Neustrom heard the first shot. The driver, a parole violator, had killed his partner, Tom Kelly, with a shot to the head. The man then turned to Neustrom and shot him three times. ``He then put his gun to my head and I heard it click,`` Neustrom recalled. ``He was out of bullets.``

The man took off and Neustrom pulled himself up and staggered after him into an alley. He shot four times and the man produced another gun and returned the fire ``four or five times.``

Neustrom collapsed and crawled back to his car. He was able to call for help when a little boy reached inside for the radio microphone and handed it to him. Then Neustrom lay next to his dead partner and waited. A large crowd formed around him, but no one offered help. Neustrom almost died, and still lives with a .38-caliber slug beneath his breastbone.

He remained on the Chicago force eight more years, participating in four more shootouts. He became a narcotics detective, but the horror and the ugliness of street life finally burned him out.

For years he`d been a student of fishing, inflamed by the scientific structure discoveries of Buck Perry and Bill Binkelman. He`d read everything he could find about the sport since he was seven. He`d been an habitue of the Chain O`Lakes and Lake Geneva all his life, learning the secrets of deep-water jigging for walleyes and bass. He`d become a respectable Lake Geneva guide in his spare time and a contributor to ``Fishing Facts`` and ``In-Fisherman``

magazines. Now, all he wanted to do was to get away, to make a living as a cop somewhere, and to fish.

A friend introduced him to Minnesota`s Itasca County and its 1,038 lakes. Neustrom managed to land a job there as a deputy sheriff. For 10 years, he has worked out of Deer River, Minn., about 100 miles between Duluth and Brainerd. There have been no shootouts, and the fishing is superb. Most importantly, he no longer has to drive 200 miles for a decent day on the water. He is only five minutes away.

Neustrom has used his time to study the waters and develop a few techniques. He operates a guide service on 20 lakes. He has done a little TV work for the ``In-Fisherman Specials`` and has co-authored the Hunting and Fishing Library`s volume on ``Walleyes`` with Dick Steinberg and Gary Roach. Another book, on fishing methods, is due out in March. At 1 p.m. Saturday, he makes his fifth seminar appearance at the Chicagoland Sportfishing, Travel and Outdoors Show at the O`Hare Expo Center in Rosemont, discussing tough walleye situations. He is part of the In-Fisherman`s team of seminar openers, including Al Lindner, Dave Csanda and Dan Sura, all natives of this area.

``As far as I`m concerned, this is a dream come true,`` Neustrom said.

``It`s unbelievable. Growing up as a kid around Wrigley Field, going to those earlier fishing shows at the Amphitheatre with my dad, you never visualize yourself as a person respected in the industry, where people might pay $1 or $2 to hear you talk.``

Not that he hasn`t paid his dues.

He used to drive to Lake Geneva in April and load the boat with floodlights just to watch fish spawning on reefs. Like every serious Chicago fisherman, he`d routinely pile into a car at 2:30 a.m. and be home late that night for a single day on productive waters.

Neustrom now has the time to toy with innovations concerning wind effects and what he calls ``the two most dreaded things in a fisherman`s life-cold front and turnover.``

The wind, he says, can be a friend if it manages to oxygenate water along a reef near deep-water structure. That kind of water always draws fish, he said.

``Say the majority of structure is at the south end of a small lake, but the wind is blowing out of the south. You`re not going to do very well,`` he explained. ``But if that wind is blowing from the north or northeast, it`s going to blow a lot of water against that structure and the fishing is going to be good. The windward side is usually much better than the leeward side.`` That old saw about ``wind from the east, fish bite least; wind from the west, fish bite best`` applies only to the presence or absence of appropriate structure, Neustrom added.